When the cops showed up at Eden's, Colin knew the drill: grab only what you could carry and get out. He'd spent years with everything he owned in a backpack, ready to skip town at the drop of a hat.
They ran like someone was chasing them. At first, someone was: it was Colin's father, it was the police. At a certain point, though, that stopped being true. They'd run far enough and long enough that no one was looking for them anymore, but they kept on running anyway, because they might have outrun Las Vegas but their problems didn't stop there. There was always other trouble, and there were other cops—and, if it wasn't the cops, it was someone else: a boyfriend, a dealer, someone else they borrowed money they'd never pay back from, someone else they lied to and tricked.
The farther he gets from those years, the more he has to admit that he doesn't really miss them. That he'd sold himself on the lie of the excitement of the road and that life just as well as he'd sold every teammate, classmate, or vaguely concerned adult on whatever life he'd made up that week, imagined lives that were always closer to what he wanted than what he had.
That, while he's glad he still knows how to make a quick exit when he has to, he's even gladder that his life has finally become something other than endlessly running away—that he has somewhere to run back to now.
"Maybe I'm looking for someone else's bruises to kiss all better," he says. "I could probably spare one for the game winner, if you ask nicely." He looks up at Mateo, purses his lips, but doesn't even bother to make it sound convincing. Flirtation feels almost like a reflex, now, the words simply things he says because he's not quite sure how else he'd fill up the empty space.
What's closer to what he's really thinking, what he really means, is:"Glad you made it back alright." And, because Mateo appeared like a short, sarcastic gift from the heavens in Colin's hour of need—because he's an occasional and mostly social smoker and a lifelong grifter who would never buy a pack of his own—he gives a hopeful nod to the cigarette in Mateo's hand and adds: "You got one of those to spare? Or even just a drag, I don't need the whole thing."
Mateo's been on this team long enough to develop an opinion on his older teammates—one whole semester feels like a century—but it's almost like he's in his own bubble with the other freshmen. There's so much going on in their clusterfuck of a room that it's sometimes hard to remember the others are even there. There's TK, arguably the only person he cares about in general, Kai, his former rival he wishes weren't there, and then Grant, who's possibly the worst person Mateo's ever met.
The rest are just kind of there. Colin too, though Mateo has noticed things about him. Colin isn't like his boyfriends, who seem happy to stick with their trio. He likes attention and he wants it from the whole team, not just those two.
That's probably why he responds to Mateo's sarcastic question by flirting. He lifts a brow when he purses his lips, his own wrapped around his cigarette. If it weren't for the "if you ask nicely" comment or the fact that Colin obviously doesn't mean it when he has two boyfriends, Mateo might entertain it.
Mateo likes sex for sex's sake, and Colin is obviously attractive. He hasn't hooked up with anyone since winter break, so it's been long enough that he feels that itch again. This isn't happening though, so he looks away from Colin's lips and blows smoke directly in his face instead.
"I score the winning goal and you're stealing my cigarettes?" Mateo asks, but he's already pulling out a fresh one for Colin. He's gifted people watches, AirPods, and sneakers without blinking an eye; a singular cigarette is hardly going to do anything.
He offers it to Colin with a roll of his eyes, just to show how much it's greatly inconveniencing him to be so charitable. "Here. I don't want your spit on mine."
